ART WITH MS K

Kawaii Shrinky Dinks

Every school year there is some new trend that today’s youths become obsessed with. Silly bands, One Direction, Pokemon Go, Minecraft . . . the list goes on and on. This year my 5th grade girls are absolutely obsessed with Kawaii – the culture of cuteness originating in Japan. They have clothes and accessories and school supplies. They are Kawaii crazy! And to be honest, this is a trend I am also on board with because it is so dang cute. I purchased a few drawing books on Amazon and there are kids in my classroom almost every morning who want to practice drawing Kawaii. Its awesome!

So I decided to do Kawaii Shrinky-Dinks with art club and another group of students. Shrinky-Dinks is a plastic sheet that you can draw on and when you put it in a toaster oven, the paper shrinks in size and grows in thickness. I don’t have any picture of the ones my students made but here are my examples. First, I drew my design onto sketch paper. I placed the transparent Shrinky-Dink plastic over and used Sharpie to outline. I colored everything in with colored pencil. Then I cut out the designs.

I used a hole punch to make holes so that these can be charms. They were carefully placed on a flattened brown lunch sack (rough side up!) and put into a 350 degree toaster oven for a couple minutes. It is really cool to see them shrink! You have to put the rough side up because they like to bend and the smooth side will stick to itself and become ruined.

Twisteez Wire is used at the end to create a charm/keychain/ornament etc. (Please don’t mind the non-Kawaii psychedelic stegosaurus that snuck in there) These were such a huge hit with students and despite being rather crafty, a huge hit with me too!